Google has announced its plans to discontinue a useful and popular feature of Google Photos. Starting June 1, 2021, new "high quality" photos or videos uploaded to the service will count against the free 15GB cap for all the files uploaded on your Google account (email, documents, slides, spreadsheets, etc.). You will need to pay for Google One storage once you hit the cap. Those photos and videos uploaded before June 1 won't count against the cap. Pixel users are also still exempt from the cap.
The "high quality" photos and videos the service refers to are those it compresses to take up less space. It's been a feature available on the service since Photos was released back in 2015. According to Google, the change of policy "allows us to keep pace with the growing demand for storage."
The company plans to introduce a new tool to help users efficiently manage their backed-up content, surfacing photos that are blurry or dark so it can suggest to you to delete them and save space.
Source: Engadget